aps and the canal. "Eigh?" said Horrocks.

"What?" said Raut. "Rather! The haze in the moonlight. Fine!"

"Our canal," said Horrocks, stopping suddenly. "Our canal by
moonlight and firelight is an immense effect. You've never seen
it? Fancy that! You've spent too many of your evenings
philandering up in Newcastle there. I tell you, for real florid
effects--But you shall see. Boiling water . . ."

As they came out of the labyrinth of clinker-heaps and mounds
of coal and ore, the noises of the rolling-mill sprang upon them
suddenly, loud, near, and distinct. Three shadowy workmen went by
and touched their caps to Horrocks. Their faces were vague in the
darkness. Raut felt a futile impulse to address them, and before
he could frame his words, they passed into the shadows. Horrocks
pointed to the canal close before them now: a weird-looking place
it seemed, in the blood-red reflections of the furnaces. The hot
water that cooled the tuyeres came into it, some fifty yards up--a
tumultuous, almost boiling affluent, and the steam rose up from
the water in silent white wisps and streaks, wrapping damply about
them, an incessant succession of ghosts coming up from the black
and red eddies, a white uprising that made the head swim. The
shining black tower of the larger blast-furnace rose overhead out
of the mist, and its tumultuous riot filled their ears. Raut kept
away from the edge of the water, and watched Horrocks.

"Here it is red," said Horrocks, "blood-red vapour as red and
hot as sin; but yonder there, where the moonlight falls on it, and
it drives across the clinker-heaps, it is as white as death."

Raut turned his head for a moment, and then came back hastily
to his watch on Horrocks. "Come along to the rolling-mills," said
Horrocks. The threatening hold was not so evident that time, and
Raut felt a little reassured. But all the same, what on earth did
Horrocks mean about "white as death" and "red as sin?"
Coincidence, perhaps?

They went and stood behind the puddlers for a little while,
and then through the rolling-mills, where amidst an incessant din
the deliberate steam-hammer beat the juice out of the succulent
iron, and black, half-naked Titans rushed the plastic bars, like
hot sealing-wax, between the wheels. "Come on," said Horrocks in
Raut's ear, and they went and peeped through the little glass hole
behind the tuyeres, and saw the tumbled fire writhing in the pit of
the blast-furnace.